The U.S. real estate industry's practice of offering philanthropic services to the communities it serves is as old as the industry itself.

New Orleans' Thomy LaFon, however, was a philanthropist who also happened to be a real estate investor.

Before the Civil War, LaFon was born "personne de couleur libres" (free person of color), Dec. 28, 1810 to his mother, Modest Foucher LaFon, who was also born free to a black slave, and to his father, Frenchman Pierre Laralde Lafon, who deserted the family when LaFon was still a boy, according to Odyssey House, a substance abuse treatment center which bears part of the LaFon real estate and philanthropic legacy.

Known to have been largely self-educated and thrifty out of necessity, LaFon was a school teacher before he engaged in lucrative real estate endeavors that are not clearly detailed by historic accounts. How, why or exactly when he turned to real estate isn't clear.

In 1842, at the age of 32, he was listed in a New Orleans city directory merely as a merchant with a shop at 387 Rampart St. During the era, free blacks in New Orleans typically were small businessmen and artisans, operating both retail and machine shops as an important part of the retail and repair business of the city, according to "A History Of New Orleans."

Some historic accounts say LaFon was worth only $10,000 before the Civil War and speculated on undrained swamp land during the Union Army occupation through the Civil War. By 1860, as a broker and speculator in a city of 170,000, he controlled many of the real estate transactions in New Orleans and was worth $500,000, history reveals.

More is known, not how he gained his wealth in real estate, but how he shared it.

The structures that house Odyssey House offer one historic glimpse at LaFon's philanthropy.

"The two buildings located at 1125 North Tonti Street, New Orleans, have, from the time they were constructed until today, held a privileged, almost unique, position in the chronicles of the city's social and humanitarian endeavors," according to Odyssey House's records.

In 1866, LaFon constructed a wooden building on the site for the Louisiana Association for Colored Orphans to house children of any race orphaned by the Civil War. His dream went partially unfulfilled because of segregationist attitudes left over from the antebellum period.

In 1876, the Societe de la Sainte Famille (an order of black nuns) took over the asylum and gradually turned it into both an orphanage and retirement home.

When LaFon died, his will provided for the construction of a larger three-story brick building maintained by the Sisters of the Holy Family as a home for aged, indigent black women. Not long after, a newly constructed hallway connected the wooden and the brick buildings, which for 80 years served New Orleans' aged needy.

The nuns moved their patients and care to newer facilities in 1973 and Odyssey House moved into the old buildings offering psychiatric-oriented, drug-free, therapy for substance abuse patients.

"I am glad that Odyssey House is using those old buildings. Thomy Lafon would have liked that. He would have been horrified at today's crime and drug problems; but happy that the buildings he made possible were still in service to the peoples' greatest needs," noted a historian of the Sisters of the Holy Family.

LaFon lived most of his life in a very unpretentious house at 242 Ursulines St. and contributed to a number of causes including establishing permanent residence for more than 18,000 freed slaves. He also donated heavily to the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Underground Railroad. By the turn of the century, blacks he assisted owned more than $15 million in New Orleans property.

During his life, Lafon established the Lafon Orphan Boys' Asylum and the Home for Aged Colored Men and Women and supported the Catholic Indigent Orphans' Institute.

He also gave liberally to numerous destitute individuals, the Louisiana Asylum, the Eye-Ear-Nose-and-Throat Hospital, New Orleans University, Southern University, the Societe des Jeunes Amis, Charity Hospital, the Religious Order of the Holy Family, the Little Sisters of the Poor and the Lafon Old Folks Home.

In his will he left a $500,000 estate with bequests to support many of the charities he championed during his life.

Fifteen months before Lafon died, a local newspaper contained the following statement about him: "To the glory of his memory and the enrichment of society the wealthy old colored man gave with love and affection several major gifts and numerous minor ones to care for the poor of all races."

Lafon died on December 22, 1893 in New Orleans and was buried in St. Louis Cemetery No. 3. Shortly after his death, Lafon became the first African-American recognized by the Louisiana Legislature for his philanthropic contributions.

Louisiana's Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism ranks his contribution to New Orleans' history alongside trumpeter Louis Armstrong, writer Rudolph Desdunes, VooDoo queen Marie Laveau and everyman Homer Plessy (Plessy vs. Ferguson).

LaFon once owned what is today's Jana's B&B and New Orleans schools and institutions bear his name.

Published: February 6, 2004

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A journalist for 35-years, Broderick Perkins parlayed an old-school daily newspaper career into a digital news service offering editorial content and consulting services. Perkins' San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews Group includes the flagship news site, DeadlineNews.Com, offering real estate, personal finance and consumer journalism, and a backshop, the Deadline Newsroom.